For Houston, the wait is finally over. The Astros were the first team since the 1991 Braves to play in multiple Game 7s in one postseason. The only other club to win two was the 1985 Royals, who did it in the first season after the LCS expanded to a best-of-seven format.

All season long, en route to winning the first World Series in franchise history, the Astros relied on baseball's best offense, a strong pitching staff, a keen eye for analytics and much more. But more than anything, they relied on a nucleus of four of the game's best hitters, who combined to punish Dodgers pitching throughout the seven-game World Series.

The Dodgers offensive woes finally caught up to them during a 5-1 loss to the Astros in Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday, putting a fitful end to a series in which Los Angeles hit just .205 as a team. The Dodgers also averaged more than nine strikeouts in each of the seven games in the Series.

Commissioner Rob Manfred was glowing in the aftermath of the World Series on Wednesday night, confident the future of the sport was bright on the heels of a seven-game set that is already being viewed as one of the best in Fall Classic history.

Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the official site of history for the Astros, who clinched their first World Series title with a 5-1 win in Game 7 on Wednesday night. But for thousands of fans, the best place to celebrate was at Minute Maid Park.

The Astros' win maintained a three-season trend in which the World Series victor celebrated a long overdue championship. The Astros' victory comes on the heels of the Cubs ending their historic 108-year drought last season -- it was not only the longest active drought but the longest in baseball history -- and the Royals winning their first title in 30 years in 2015.

The Astros are the 2017 World Series champions, and part of the credit has to go to manager A.J. Hinch, who made a decision early in the game that has essentially never happened in World Series history.

It's been a long season for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who lost his father in March before guiding Los Angeles to a Major League-best 104 victories in the regular season before pushing the Astros to seven games before falling in Game 7 of the World Series on Wednesday.

Carlos Beltran stood next to the makeshift stage on the field at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night after the Astros' 5-1 win in Game 7, seemingly stunned that he had just taken part in something he had waited his entire career to take part in: a World Series trophy ceremony.

Who doesn't love a parade? Certainly not fans of the Astros, who will gather on the streets in downtown Houston this afternoon for what figures to be one of the biggest parades in the city's history to celebrate the 2017 World Series champions.

All would have been forgiven and forgotten for Yu Darvish had his Game 7 start been everything that his Game 3 one wasn't. But a chance at redemption instead morphed into a repeat performance that left the Dodgers to wonder how their best-laid plans had all gone so wrong.

Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen gave Dave Roberts five scoreless innings in Wednesday's Game 7. However, circumstances didn't offer Roberts the luxury of holding either back until the end. Instead, their stingy relief work, while it did prevent the Astros from adding to their early five-run lead, finished mostly as a footnote in a 5-1 loss that left the Dodgers a victory short of a World Series championship.

Ron DeNoville of Atascocita, Texas, is 85, and he is still displaced by Hurricane Harvey's flood destruction from late August. On Wednesday night, he watched Game 7 of the World Series on TV, but he was represented at Dodger Stadium by his daughter Diane Loughran and her friend Jennifer Jozwiak, who made the decision to come here during the day on Monday.